


Two Songs

by rexluscus



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Force Communion, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Redeemed Ben Solo, Snoke - Freeform, Star Wars: The Last Jedi Spoilers, You don't have to read this romantically but you can
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-10
Updated: 2018-03-10
Packaged: 2019-03-29 14:38:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13929150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rexluscus/pseuds/rexluscus
Summary: Ben gets used to not having people in his head.





	Two Songs

**Author's Note:**

> For @hurtkylofest on Tumblr
> 
> Day 10: Rey rescues Kylo from Snoke
> 
> I tried to give this prompt a post-TLJ spin

The corridor Ben takes to the mess hall goes not past the other dorms but away from them, along the base’s outer wall, with nothing but flat sunlight and frozen dust on the other side. As he walks, he leaves behind the sounds of people and droids, even of the generators, and then—it’s not ordinary silence. It pushes in on his brain like a dense atmosphere, squeezing his sinuses and burning his eyes. He stumbles and reaches for the wall but his hand slips and his knees hit the floor. What  _is_ this?

 _Ah,_ he realizes.  _This is the absence of Snoke._

Before he’d ever had a name for the low hum in his mind, it had been there, like a motor with a loose gasket, irritating but companion-like. Only years later, when it began speaking  _words,_ did it acquire menace.

So he was never inoculated against silence. And since Snoke’s death, he has somehow managed to avoid it—always he could hear the sounds of a starship’s engines, if nothing else. In this little corner of a Resistance base, it has finally caught up with him—worse than the loudest noise, a crushing, sucking  _non_ -noise that he can’t shut out because it’s not  _there_.

He’s crouched against the wall, rocking his head back and forth in his hands, when the silence breaks—a voice saying—

“Ben?”

He uncurls violently with a startled grunt—he can be ashamed over that later—and Rey stumbles back, nearly dropping a half-eaten sandwich. He stares at her and catches his breath, noticing he has bitten his tongue.

She kneels down and reaches for his temples. “What’s wrong with your head?”

He tries to wince away, but not in time, and when her hand touches his skin, it conducts a sort of— _vibration—_ from her body to his. A hum. Not like Snoke’s, but higher—no, lower—more varied, it turns out, more like music. Relief washes through him. Clutching her shirt, he shoves his head into her hands, too desperate to care if he makes a fool of himself.

“Ben"—she hugs him awkwardly and strokes the back of his neck—"you’re scaring me. What hurts, what happened?”

“Nothing,” he sighs, face pressed tight against her chest. “Can you—keep talking?”

“Er—sure.” She folds her legs underneath herself and hauls his big upper body easily into her lap. “I learned a poem today, written by a monk to his pet loth-cat—would you like to hear it? It begins,  _We are both so happy here, downwind of the abbot’s weir—you with chasing mice in grass, I with book and brush and glass…”_

Under the notes of her voice run those other notes, soft but still distinguishable—more a sensation in his body than a sound in his ears. His aching head fills with light and space, and a warm wind curls around his heart. This, this is what  _not being alone_  was supposed to feel like. He follows the lifts and falls of her presence until he finds his own vocal chords vibrating, and her voice stops.

“What’s that you’re humming? Is it a song?”

“It’s you,” he says, and she seems to know exactly what he means.


End file.
